Funding Extinction? Biological Needs and Political Realities in the Allocation of Resources to Endangered Species Recovery

Our nation's endangered species require implementation of scientifically based recovery actions to attain sustainable population sizes and to avert extinction. Crafting recovery approaches is often politically contentious and scientifically challenging, but it proceeds reasonably well through the writing of legislated recovery plans. Implementation of planned recovery strategies, however, is much more difficult because it often curtails resource use by humans and requires adequate funding. Implementation decisions ultimately are made by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), both of which are tasked with administering the Endangered Species Act (ESA). However, many stakeholders with conflicting goals, differing reward structures, and varying routes of influence are wedded to implementation decisions (Figure 1). Those stakeholders—a public composed of resource users and stewards; a Congress seeking political gain; federal agencies tasked with conserving biodiversity, set within departments that are expected to make natural resources available; and states that must curtail their residents' activities to achieve national goals—find it difficult to reach consensus (Easter-Pilcher 1996, Czech and Krausman 2001). As a result, recovery spending may not match agencies' stated recovery needs (USGAO 1988, Simon et al. 1995, Restani and Marzluff 2001). Species favored by the public or Congress, for example, might garner sufficient funds for many recovery actions, while species with less robust sponsorship go without funds and perish from neglect. For example, failure to remove exotic brown tree snakes (Boiga irregularis) from Guam (a US territory with one congressional delegate without voting power on the floor of the House of Representatives) led to the extinction of the Guam broadbill (Myiagra freycineti) and the Mariana mallard (Anas oustaleti). Natural resource policy directed at conserving biodiversity—allocating funds to species listed as threatened or endangered, for example—should be most effective when based on current scientific thinking and supported by the public (Ehrlich and Wilson 1991, Babbitt 1995, Eisner et al. 1995). Scientific wisdom, public opinion, and agency policy are currently aligned to allocate funds in proportion to species' needs. A priority system developed by the FWS to allocate resources to recover threatened and endangered species is based on biologically sound criteria (Table 1). Species are ranked according to the degree of threat that they face, their potential for recovery, and their taxonomic distinctness. Ranks range from 1, highest priority (high threat, high recovery potential, monotypic genus), to 18, lowest priority (low threat, low recovery potential, subspecies). The public also believes that rarity of a species and its ecological importance should direct conservation (Czech et al. 1998). Despite this agreement, many people—scientists, government officials, the public—question the effectiveness of the endangered species program (Rohlf 1991, Tear et al. 1995, Carroll et al. 1996, Easter-Pilcher 1996, Foin et al. 1998, Restani and Marzluff 2001), in part because approximately 1 percent of listed species receive almost 50 percent of available recovery funds each year (Simon et al. 1995, USDOI 1992, 1994). In 1988, the US General Accounting Office (GAO) formally criticized the FWS for not following its own priority system (USGAO 1988). FWS responded that other factors—cooperative opportunities, state and regional priorities, and congressional interest—influenced implementation of recovery policy. The growing number of threatened and endangered species, coupled with reduced budgets for recovery (Mann and Plummer 1995, Baker 1999, Dobson et al. 1999), underscores the need to follow a biologically sound and publicly supported conservation agenda. We analyzed the most recent FWS financial reports (USFWS 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998) to determine whether the allocation of funding now adheres to the priority system. Our objectives were to identify how recovery spending deviates from priorities, to describe consequences to conservation, and to recommend improvements in the allocation process. We analyzed expenditures for terrestrial vertebrates as a group and separately for mammals, birds, and herptiles (amphibians and reptiles). We assumed that gross expenditures indexed species' recovery efforts because expenditures included all recovery spending by state and federal agencies, covered both routine and costly management efforts, and correlated with the percentage of requested funds eventually allocated for recovery (1992: r = 0.51, p = 0.012; 1993: r = 0.50, p = 0.007; 1994: r = 0.54, p = 0.002; 1995: r = 0.61, p = 0.001). Recovery expenditures do not track priority ranks Recovery expenditures were poorly correlated with priority rank (Figure 2). Comparing expenditures with each element of the hierarchical ranking system revealed that (a) the degree of threat that the species was experiencing (the primary priority criterion) was relatively unimportant; (b) those species with high recovery potential received the most funds; and (c) taxonomic distinctness at the monotypic genus, species, or subspecies level was unimportant (Figure 3). Instead, FWS allocated most funding to species whose recovery conflicted with economic development (i.e., category C species [Figure 4]), to species whose populations were increasing or decreasing (Figure 5), and to species with wide distributions (Figure 6). Threatened (“likely to become endangered,” according to the ESA definition) and endangered (“in danger of extinction”) species received similar expenditures (t distribution = 0.66, df (degrees of freedom) = 177, p = 0.26, one-tailed significance test). Mammals and birds received more money per species than herptiles (F = 10.32, df = 2, 176, p < 0.001), despite similarities in mean priority ranks (F = 0.07, df = 2, 175, p = 0.93) and population trends (increasing, decreasing, stable) among taxa (χ2 = 6.0, df = 4, p = 0.20). It is unlikely that allocation of expenditures in the near future will improve recovery of narrowly distributed species because recently developed allocation formulas assign double weight to widely distributed species (USFWS 1996). The FWS justified this type of weighting because “the more widespread a species the more costly will be conservation, consultation, and recovery measures” (USFWS 1996). However, we found that dividing expenditures by range size did not improve correlations between annual expenditures and priority ranks (r2 = 0.03, p = 0.035). Effects of not following priorities How did the lack of a relationship between priority rank and funding affect recovery of threatened and endangered species? Species with small ranges, especially those inhabiting islands, were underfunded relative to their priority rank. This pattern was strong among and within taxa. However, such species should receive more funding because small populations are vulnerable to extinction through single or cumulative effects involving random demographic events, environmental catastrophes, and human processes (Goodman 1987, Lande 1988, Pimm et al. 1993). Current spending practices neglect most high-ranking herptiles inhabiting Hawaii, the Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico (Table 2). To ignore islands is dangerous because islands possess the highest degrees of endemism and contain many highly endangered species (Scott et al. 1987, Scott et al. 1988, Pulliam and Babbitt 1997). Not surprisingly, of the seven species that have gone extinct while listed under the ESA, four had inhabited islands: Guam broadbill, Mariana mallard, Bridled white-eye (Zosterops conspicillatus), and Little Mariana fruit bat (Pteropus tokudae); the other three extinct species are the Bachman's warbler (Vermivora bachmanii), ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), and dusky seaside sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus nigrescens). “Inability to garner sufficient recovery funds” may soon join the list of reasons that island species are more prone to extinction than mainland species. Why do expenditures fail to track priorities? Expenditures often fail to track priorities because of a combination of political, social, and institutional barriers. Each barrier alone is important, but together they effectively limit the funds received by high-priority species that have low public appeal, that have little effect on the economy, and that reside on islands far from Washington, DC. Institutional and political barriers Both the location of FWS regional offices and political representation appear to favor wide-ranging, mainland species. Each of the seven FWS regional offices requests recovery funds independently. If a species occurs across several regions, it often receives support in more than one, thereby garnering more funding than higher-ranked species that are found in only one region. Island species inhabit a single FWS region with a small congressional contingent (e.g., Hawaii has four representatives, and Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and American Samoa each have one delegate). In comparison, mainland faunas generally inhabit densely populated areas with bigger congressional delegations (e.g., California, with 54 representatives, and Florida, with 25). Similarly, congressional earmarking of funds affects how FWS follows its priority system. Congress earmarked 35–75 percent of recovery budgets from 1991 (75 percent) to 1994 (35 percent) (USGAO 1988, USDOI 1992, 1994) in support of projects in politically well-represented mainland states (e.g., California, Florida, Arizona, Washington, and Oregon) that involved wide-ranging species (e.g., gray wolf [Canis lupus], peregrine falcon [Falco peregrinus]). Social barriers Litigation patterns are another critical reason why species do not receive recovery funds in order of their priority rank. Recent spending patterns showed that moderately ranked species (ranks 6, 7, and 8), whose recovery conflicts with economic development, received more funding than higher-ranked species. The recovery of moderately ranked species (e.g., red-cockaded woodpecker [Picoides borealis] and desert tortoise [Gopherus agassizii]) generates significant public controversy because their recovery requires preservation of economically valuable lands. Not surprisingly, lawsuits are more likely to be filed on behalf of category C species than on behalf of other species (lawsuit information is from LexisNexis™: lawsuit filed [yes, no] versus species group [category C, all others]; χ2 = 24.70, df = 1, p < 0.001). The analysis included those lawsuits brought against US government agencies for which a decision was rendered. When it is sued, FWS must expend a disproportionate amount of money and effort to obtain the detailed demographic data needed in court proceedings for those few moderately ranked species named in the lawsuit. Special interest groups that file suits or lobby congressional representatives appear to affect how well FWS allocates recovery funds according to its priority system. For example, 109 lawsuits concerning threatened and endangered species were brought against the federal government during 1990–1999; about half of them involved only three groups of species (spotted owls, 28 lawsuits; sea turtles, 15; grizzly bear [Ursus arctos horribilis], 11). Moreover, nearly three times as many lawsuits were filed on behalf of threatened species as were filed for endangered ones (t = 1.88, df = 177, p = 0.06). The mean priority rank of species that were involved in lawsuits was only six. Birds especially benefit from litigation because they are represented by more environmental groups than are mammals or herptiles (57 groups versus 40 and 6, respectively) (Czech et al. 1998). The public appears willing to ignore taxon when establishing conservation priorities (Czech et al. 1998), yet birds and mammals received more money per species than herptiles, and only for birds did spending correlate with rank (mammals: r2 = 0.05, p = 0.11; birds: r2 = 0.04, p = 0.05; herptiles: r2 = 0.04, p = 0.18). Spending for mammal recovery programs also reflected special interest priorities, with most funding directed toward large, wide-ranging predators. Only economic conflict generated fiscal support for herptiles. It is possible that special interest groups disagree with FWS about whether the priority ranking system is based on biologically sound criteria. These organizations may believe that FWS fails to consider important biological evidence and, therefore, they must file lawsuits to address shortcomings in the priority system for low-ranking and threatened species. We doubt this possibility for two reasons. First, population sizes of endangered species, for which fewer lawsuits are filed, are significantly smaller than those of threatened species (Wilcove et al. 1993). Because they have smaller populations, endangered species are more vulnerable to extinction. Second, island species occupy narrow ranges, have small population sizes, and must contend with a multitude of negative factors (e.g., habitat loss, competition with exotics, and disease) (Goodman 1987, Lande 1988, Scott et al. 1988, Pimm et al. 1993). Quite simply, island species are more imperiled than the wide-ranging mainland species that are the subject of most litigation. Improving the recovery process Improving the correlation between FWS spending and species ranks will require change within the private sector, Congress, and FWS. Funding levels must be increased so that more species receive the resources necessary for ensuring persistence. Current trade-offs in resource allocation push many narrowly restricted species toward extinction. For example, 13 species did not receive any funding for at least a year during the period 1992–1995, and population trends for 7 of these species were decreasing or uncertain. Continuing to enlighten the public and Congress about human-caused, elevated extinction rates may help boost conservation budgets. Even if those budgets do increase, biologically defensible criteria should be used to prioritize recovery funding so that loss of biodiversity is minimized. However, FWS policy alone cannot accomplish this because of congressional earmarking. If Congress continues to promote recovery of selected, high-profile species of low rank, it should consider increasing overall budget levels rather than earmarking limited funds. These congressional directives reduce funds that normally would be available to follow the ranking system. An economically realistic increase in the endangered species budget of $300 million per year would produce tangible results (Miller et al. 2002). The diversion of limited funds to species with low priority ranks, such as the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) and the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)—a result of lawsuits—has a significant, negative impact on the recovery of endangered species. Special interest groups that are concerned with maintaining biodiversity could increase their effectiveness by engaging less in costly litigation aimed at low-ranking species and more in litigation on behalf of high-ranking species. This change would effectively pressure Congress and FWS to fund recovery programs in proportion to biologically relevant priorities, to monitor implementation of priorities, and to inform the public about potential losses of biodiversity if priorities are not followed. In this way, lawsuits could increase the biological soundness of recovery (Sidle 1998). Lawsuits also disrupt the use of a priority system during the ESA listing process (USGAO 1993). Funding of high-ranking species could be improved if FWS increased coordination among regional of regional spending by agency or would identify significant from biological priorities and would by federal For example, region 1 species recovery in Hawaii, the Mariana Islands, and California, while region recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and This the most populated and politically well-represented areas and Florida, for against the least within FWS regional to from the regions, to ignore high-priority species in poorly represented areas within might be within FWS regional offices also appears to development of conservation An institutional to may recovery of narrowly restricted species. among agencies species with because the number of with the number of agencies, and organizations opportunities, which has its is by but may also direct funds from species in its should to conservation of more species, not to garner more resources for fewer species. The FWS responded to that it most funds to species recovery by that a species' is important when the endangered species program because a public is from (USGAO 1988). This may be but the cumulative effect of such spending on many species with low ranks the correlation between expenditures and priority If FWS to fund a few species of biological need (e.g., bald peregrine to political and public support for its the agency should which species will receive favored and This list should receive congressional and its own while recovery funds should be allocated according to the priority system. It is important that a spending between species that in political and biological needs is not the recovery process. This to increase must be with the of extinction. We that species that are experiencing a high degree of threat and that also possess potential (i.e., priority ranks = should garner significant funds. This change in funding would a to current spending patterns because it both scientific priorities and the of public support for the endangered species However, it is not currently percent of such species received less than at least in the period to 1995). Funding recovery efforts at adequate levels for these species, many of which have small ranges, could produce Moreover, increasing recovery funding for and which percent of listed species, could significantly improve recovery (Miller 2002). To imperiled island species may increase the number of and ultimately may result in of the than recovery to support for the ESA, federal and state natural resource agencies should the of and political that are available to and populations (e.g., National National thereby the need to from the National that the public is to environmental agencies support and should justified in environmental to species populations to dangerous levels and ESA of the ESA are because they are as a to species When agencies on the ESA the is likely to fail or to These the for to the or to its Our may not be possible to within the current that FWS The FWS poorly in effectiveness with other management agencies (e.g., National and because its of is it a it must environmental and it is for number of species the endangered species program within FWS should be with its within the a of that recovery of mammals and a single that has the to recover threatened and endangered species and that is by a might improve the population of many listed species. We Scott and for and to the between the ESA and other natural resource lawsuit data from the US and thereby improved the system in and currently used by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to recover threatened and endangered species Species that received the least and most funding relative to their priority rank among the US Fish and Wildlife Service Congress, the organizations and the public influence allocation of expenditures for recovery of threatened and endangered species between expenditures and priority rank of threatened and endangered species. Little (r2 = 0.04, that less than in spending was by priority rank and size = which significance = did not improve recovery spending by states and other federal agencies was r2 = 0.05, p = between spending and hierarchical of the priority ranking system. from (F = df = p = for taxonomic = df = 7, p = = df = p = potential = p = 0.001). = df = p = of annual expenditures between category C species and all species within the highest priority rank. category C species rank than sizes Species whose recovery will economic conflict receive a C in to their rank and have priority other species of similar rank between expenditures and population of threatened and endangered species. significant among within a year = df = 2, p = 0.002; test). Species with population trends = were not analyzed rank correlation between of mean expenditures by priority rank and range size of threatened and endangered species = p < 0.001). relationship between range size and priority rank = p = or population (F = df = 2, p = for taxonomic r = 0.26, p = birds: r = p < herptiles: r = p = Island species are especially vulnerable to extinction because their limited range and small population sizes make them to such as the of the brown tree by on by of the birds, the current population is a high-priority species that has received financial Lawsuits have directed funding toward this species, but at a than funding levels for mainland species. by Marzluff The island of of the Mariana Islands, is to populations of several endangered species. However, development is of the threat of by species is and political representation in Congress is These factors to increase the of species' extinction on this island by island species the extinction the and the Mariana These species are as high priorities for recovery, but funding is currently not sufficient to remove important factors and increase their population As a result, we may soon them only in this in a by Marzluff The bald eagle is a wide-ranging species with public and federal agencies significant of their endangered species budgets to its management and recovery despite its low priority rank The was by the on the was by Restani For programs were directed at American peregrine a wide-ranging subspecies whose primary of was have a rank and imperiled island species also in need of may have from this in by Restani